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Optimal Motion Planning for Object Picking in Industrial Contexts with Optimal Control

Dries Dirckx, Jan Swevers, Wilm Decre

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AI summary

A CPU-based optimal control planner with trajectory reuse achieves higher success rates and lower cycle times than GPU-based optimizers for industrial pick-and-place tasks.
optimal control motion planning pick-and-place industrial robotics warm-starting CPU-based optimization

Problem

Industrial manufacturing requires motion planners that adapt quickly to variable configurations, but existing GPU-based optimizers often rely on conservative approximations that compromise accuracy and safety, while lacking hardware accessibility in typical assembly cells.

Approach

The method formulates pick-and-place motion as a hard-constrained time-optimal optimal control problem solved on standard CPU hardware, enhanced by a near-optimal warm-starting strategy that reuses previously computed trajectories for similar tasks.

Key results

  • 98.33% success rate compared to 81.67% for cuRobo
  • Guaranteed final pose accuracy within 1 mm and 1°
  • 0.70× lower execution cycle time than GPU-based planners
  • Up to 57.5% computation time reduction via near-optimal warm-starting

Why it matters

It offers a reliable, hardware-accessible alternative for flexible manufacturing cells that require precise, safe, and time-optimal robotic motion without dedicated GPU infrastructure.

Abstract

No abstract on file.

Index terms

Industrial Robots Optimization and Optimal Control Motion Control

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